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“In Ethiopia, a combination of complex factors every year leave thousands upon thousands of people struggling to find enough food to eat, clean water to drink and proper medicines to take. Yet, as I have seen today, real efforts are being made by people to rebuild their own lives, to find lasting solutions that will help them become self reliant and independent,” Princess Haya said.
Princess Haya met men and women who had been working side-by-side, using spades and pickaxes, to restore their environment and enhance their livelihoods, in exchange for food assistance from WFP. She also met beneficiaries at a project where WFP food is used as an incentive for trained volunteers to provide home-based care to people living with HIV/AIDS and their families.
“HIV / AIDS compounds the existing high levels of poverty and food insecurity for people already struggling to survive in Ethiopia. But when chronically sick patients, orphans, HIV-positive pregnant and feeding women and people living with HIV/AIDS are provided with food, nutritional information and support from trained care-givers from within their own communities, their quality of life can improve markedly,” said WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Ethiopia, Mohamed Diab, who accompanied Princess Haya on her visit and thanked her for bringing attention to the humanitarian needs of so many people in Ethiopia. He also went on to thank the donor community in Ethiopia.
“Donors supported WFP’s activities very generously in 2005. Through these contributions, WFP has been able to continue with its portfolio of recovery programmes in Ethiopia. These complement our emergency interventions and really do help communities in their transition to sustainability and self-sufficiency,” said Diab.
Despite a generally good harvest at the end of 2005, some 2.6 million people in Ethiopia will still require emergency assistance in 2006. The majority of these people are in drought-hit southern Ethiopia. In addition, more than seven million people are chronically short of food and will receive food and cash transfers in exchange for their work in community-based schemes. This is the second field visit that Princess Haya has conducted since her appointment as WFP’s Goodwill Ambassador.
Princess Haya traveled to Malawi in December and will be continuing her field visits to other hunger stricken areas over the coming few months. Princess Haya was appointed a WFP Goodwill Ambassador in October, and is the first Arab and the first woman to take up this position. Her appointment was supported by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, making her the second Goodwill Ambassador ever for WFP, after Senator George McGovern.
Princess Haya also established the first food aid NGO in the Arab world, “Tkiyet Um Ali” — a unique initiative she founded in Jordan to provide food aid and social services to the poor. WFP’s budget for its relief and recovery operation in Ethiopia for a three-year period, from January 2005 to December 2007, is US$763 million.
Recent donations have come from the United States (US$9.421 million), the European Commission (US$6.895 million), Luxembourg (US$808,808), Finland (US$352,942) Switzerland (US$33,733), Japan (US$26,011) and the Netherlands (US$16,053).
WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency: each year, it gives food to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 61 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world’s poorest countries. WFP Global School Feeding Campaign – For just 19 US cents a day, you can help WFP give children in poor countries a healthy meal at school – a gift of hope for a brighter future.
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